QuickBooks Point of Sale Pro 7.0

Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale offers a solid base in its existing financial software and the basics of a good point-of-sale (POS) product. However, it lacks several features, such as mobile solutions, which modern businesses will look for.

Cons

Bottom Line

Not yet reviewed by editors.

28 Feb 2018Barbara Krasnoff

When looking for a financial software package, it's probable that Intuit will immediately come to mind. Intuit's set of QuickBooks applications is one of the most well-known lines of financial software available today, especially for individuals and small businesses. So it's no surprise that Intuit should also have a point-of-sale (POS) version, directed mainly at small businesses. Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale (which begins at $1,200) is geared mostly toward retail solutions. According to a company representative, it was planned to appeal to two sets of users: experienced sellers who are setting up a new system for an existing outlet and experienced sellers who are setting up their own shop for the first time. It can be used by single outlet users up to those with 25 outlets. It's an excellent POS solution, but doesn't beat our two Editors' Choice winners in this roundup, Square Point of Sale and Vend POS.

Cost

Instead of the monthly plans offered by most of its competitors, Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale charges an initial, one-time cost for the software, based on three separate plans. The Basic plan starts at $1,200 and lets you sync with QuickBooks accounting software, process credit cards (actually transaction fees are separate), track inventory, create reports, ring up sales byusing a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (not included), import data, managed your employee access, offer discounts, returns, store credit and gift receipts, and track cash. The $1,700 Pro plan adds the ability to track multiple vendors, add photos, track employee hours and commissions, customize price tags and receipts, set up a rewards program, create promotional pricing and layaways, and ship and track packages. Finally, the Multi-Store plan, which starts at $1,900, adds such functions as analyzing data by store location, and creating a number of reports.

As with most of the other POS systems, you can also purchase a number of hardware devices, such as a PIN pad for credit cards ($350), a receipt printer ($220), or a barcode scanner ($200). For processing payments, Intuit offers a variety of "pay-as-you-go" and monthly plans with its QuickBooks Payment service. The former takes 2.7 percent of transactions made with a swipe/dipped credit card and 3.5 percent for transactions that are manually keyed in. If your customers supply a PIN with the card, then the cost goes down to 1 percent per transaction.

Using a monthly plan doesn't eliminate the per-transaction fees but it does lower them. For $19.95 per month, you pay 2.3 percent plus 25 cents for a swiped/dipped card; 3.2 percentplus 25 cents for a keyed-in transaction, and 1 percent plus 25 cents for swipe/dip with PIN. You can use other payment processors with Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale; however, you will have to key any acceptance codes manually into the system. Intuit offers a free 30-day trial for any of its skews.

Sales Operation

Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale is optimized for use with Microsoft's Surface Pro 4, which is an interesting difference from other POS products, most of which center on Apple's iPad. (You can use other Windows 10 tablets but Intuit recommends the Surface Pro 4 as the most compatible hardware to use.)

Geared mostly toward retail solutions, QuickBooks Point of Sale offers many of the basic features that a solid POS system offers. It is planned for ease of use. The center Navigator section offers icons corresponding to the various functions and is divided into three sections: Point of Sale, Purchasing, and Employees. Arrows run between the icons, showing users the natural progression of a sale or function.

In fact, the software offers a number of different ways for users to access features. Besides the Navigator, the buttons on the left-hand side give access to quickly accessible tasks or data such as Make a Sale, Customer List, or End Of Day. There are also drop-down menus at the top and a button called "I Want to," which gives immediate access to features such as Make a Sale, Show Held Receipts, Reports, Add Item, Purchasing & Vendors, and other functions. On the right-hand side of the screen, "Post-It" notes alert you to upcoming tasks, such as reorders or other reminders.

Like all of the other POS systems we reviewed, Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale accepts the major credit and debit cards (including EMV cards), along with cash and checks. You can use a barcode scanner to register sales, offer discounts, and add customer info. Unfortunately, the system does not yet accept e-payments such as Apple Pay and it uses a third-party partner for processing gift cards.

The sale screen lets you scan or type in product info at top. Once you see the item you are selling, you can click on it to get details such as the quantity on hand and the quantity on order (which is handy if, for example, you have none in inventory but want to assure your customer that it will be in soon). Discounts can be entered automatically by using the inventory screen to create types of customers (for example, you can have a regular price, sale price, employee price, etc.) or manually.

You also choose the type of payment (cash, credit, gift card, etc.); multiple forms of payment (say, a gift card plus cash) can be used. Customer info can be accessed from a field at top. When you enter the name, information about that customer, including the last sale and any notes, appears just below the search field. You can also access additional data about your customer via a "More info" button, including the customer's sales history, statistics, and contact info.

Other Features

Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale's back-office functionality is comprehensive and offers most of the small-business features that its competitors do. The Inventory section, for example, can combine views for up to 25 stores; you can also follow more than one vendor for specific product types. You can easily print tags for any items that don't have their own UPC codes.

The Employee section is also fairly robust, allowing you to clock staff in and outlets you clock them in and out. It also lets you control a wide range of very specific permissions for the Owner, Manager, Assistant Manager or Associate.

Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale doesn't create automatic email campaigns, but you can send out customer emails by creating a list of matching customers (for example, those that purchased a certain class of product within the last 30 days), and using the resulting list with a third-party email service such as Constant Contact. It also has a very flexible Reward Manager, allowing you to set up a purchase threshold, expiration date, and a tracking period, among other factors.

The customer-facing features that Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale supports are rather old-fashioned. There is a pole display that shows two lines of text but none are flip back-and-forth tablets or other interfaces that can show more complete customer info, such as those available by solutions such as NCR Silver or Square Point of Sale.

For mobile payments, Intuit offers a separate application called QuickBooks GoPayment that can be used with either iPhone or Android devices, and is used with a $30 card swipe reader. However, the app is very basic and not associated with the POS system, and it doesn't work with contactless systems such as Apple Pay.

Support

As might be expected, Intuit has a robust set of online support services, including articles, setup instructions, tutorials and videos; there is also a support community section. There is a page dedicated to the Point of Sale Desktop products; phone support is available weekdays 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. PT, and Saturdays 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. PT (helpful but possible not enough for a panicked store owner during a Sunday sale).

Other Ratings and Conclusion

In order to help evaluate this POS system, we checked customer satisfaction ratings from a website called Finances Online, which evaluates financial solutions. According to the website, it draws these ratings from "reviews, comments, and opinions across a wide range of social media sites." Finances Online gave Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale a user satisfaction rating of 88 percent and a score of 8.8.

If you're part of the QuickBooks ecosystem of financial packages, then using a POS package associated with that ecosystem could make things much easier for you. That being said, Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale seems to lack several of the features that other systems offer, such as a more robust method of mobile sales; access to Samsung payments and other no-contact systems; and a more modern customer-facing user interface. According to an Intuit representative, these and other features are in the works; once they are available, Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale will be a more competitive product.

Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale

excellent

Bottom Line: Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale offers a solid base in its existing financial software and the basics of a good point-of-sale (POS) product. However, it lacks several features, such as mobile solutions, which modern businesses will look for.

About the Author

Barbara Krasnoff has been writing about technology for longer than she cares to admit. Her work can be found at Computerworld, HPe enterprise.nxt, and Display Daily, among others. Her website can be found at Brooklynwriter.com, or follow her on Twitter @BarbaraKrasnoff. See Full Bio